The Wiki hardware section on motherboards is useful as a "yes it works"/"no it doesn't".

It is not useful at all from the point of view of figuring out if a new motherboard or variant of an existing one will work, or how much of it will work.

I'd propose that the motherboard section takes each motherboard and breaks it down into the chipsets on it, then there are just pointers to info about that chipset.

For example,

Motherboard A- Sound: ALC889A -> (points to separate page about this chip) working on this motherboard? Y/N

Or maybe this just means a separate set of hardware entries for chipsets?

I know the process I go through to select a motherboard is quite involved. I am happy to start the ball rolling and document the process and the chipsets.

PS is there a way to invoke some sort of script to automatically get motherboard info from other web sites and past it into the Wiki. Not that there is such a script, am just after ideas on *how* this could be done

All I'm saying is that as each motherboard revision comes out, they change a chip or 2 and suddenly the Ethernet stops working on the new revision. I spent a *lot* of time trawling various resources to come up with a system that looks like it will work (Core/MD came up tonight, no Mythtv yet though!).

You are right that we should all put up what we have and what we've learned, and I've been doing this along the way in the Wiki.

Once I have everything working I'll document my whole system.

I've put my motherboard details in the Wiki- Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-DS2H for AMD AM2/AM2+, which I'm using with an AMD Athlon X2 low power 4850E (45W) processor.

The Wiki hardware section on motherboards is useful as a "yes it works"/"no it doesn't".

It is not useful at all from the point of view of figuring out if a new motherboard or variant of an existing one will work, or how much of it will work.

I'd propose that the motherboard section takes each motherboard and breaks it down into the chipsets on it, then there are just pointers to info about that chipset.

For example,

Motherboard A- Sound: ALC889A -> (points to separate page about this chip) working on this motherboard? Y/N

Or maybe this just means a separate set of hardware entries for chipsets?

I know the process I go through to select a motherboard is quite involved. I am happy to start the ball rolling and document the process and the chipsets.

PS is there a way to invoke some sort of script to automatically get motherboard info from other web sites and past it into the Wiki. Not that there is such a script, am just after ideas on *how* this could be done

Toytally agreed - I have waisted SO much time on motherboards that appear to be as per recommended but just will NOT work!

The Wiki hardware section on motherboards is useful as a "yes it works"/"no it doesn't".

It is not useful at all from the point of view of figuring out if a new motherboard or variant of an existing one will work, or how much of it will work.

I'd propose that the motherboard section takes each motherboard and breaks it down into the chipsets on it, then there are just pointers to info about that chipset.

For example,

Motherboard A- Sound: ALC889A -> (points to separate page about this chip) working on this motherboard? Y/N

Or maybe this just means a separate set of hardware entries for chipsets?

I know the process I go through to select a motherboard is quite involved. I am happy to start the ball rolling and document the process and the chipsets.

PS is there a way to invoke some sort of script to automatically get motherboard info from other web sites and past it into the Wiki. Not that there is such a script, am just after ideas on *how* this could be done

Toytally agreed - I have waisted SO much time on motherboards that appear to be as per recommended but just will NOT work!

And yet you haven't bothered to add any of your experience to the wiki yourself...

IMHO, the motherboard section in the wiki is a great idea, but ultimately futile. As mentioned above, MBs change too often and people don't update the wiki (myself included). When I was looking for a MB I started with the wiki, and basically none of the entries were available any longer. Ultimately I based my choice on manufacturer, features, and chipset. I don't remember the exact MB I bought, but I doubt the exact version is still available and that's the real problem.

A couple ideas that MAY help. As mentioned above, change it from motherboard to chipset info, this is what most of us talk in anyway. For example, if someone asked what a good MB is for integrated graphics, the typical response isn't to suggest a MB, but to suggest getting one with an nvidia 6150 chipset or whatever.

Another idea, instead of asking people to create a generic wiki page entry have a "submit your hardware" button that asks a series of questions or opens a template. The template can have a number canned items such as integrated graphics chipset, manufacturer, number of pci slots, success/failure details, version of LMCE tested with, other notes, etc. etc. etc. Clicking submit then creates a uniform wiki entry or even an entry in a searchable database. Yes, I'm sure creating wiki pages is easy stuff, but in the end people are just not doing it. Making it dead simple and not requiring a login for wiki entry or somehow using logins from this forum would probably increase the amount of user supplied info on the wiki.

IMHO, the motherboard section in the wiki is a great idea, but ultimately futile. As mentioned above, MBs change too often and people don't update the wiki (myself included). When I was looking for a MB I started with the wiki, and basically none of the entries were available any longer. Ultimately I based my choice on manufacturer, features, and chipset. I don't remember the exact MB I bought, but I doubt the exact version is still available and that's the real problem.

A couple ideas that MAY help. As mentioned above, change it from motherboard to chipset info, this is what most of us talk in anyway. For example, if someone asked what a good MB is for integrated graphics, the typical response isn't to suggest a MB, but to suggest getting one with an nvidia 6150 chipset or whatever.

Another idea, instead of asking people to create a generic wiki page entry have a "submit your hardware" button that asks a series of questions or opens a template. The template can have a number canned items such as integrated graphics chipset, manufacturer, number of pci slots, success/failure details, version of LMCE tested with, other notes, etc. etc. etc. Clicking submit then creates a uniform wiki entry or even an entry in a searchable database. Yes, I'm sure creating wiki pages is easy stuff, but in the end people are just not doing it. Making it dead simple and not requiring a login for wiki entry or somehow using logins from this forum would probably increase the amount of user supplied info on the wiki.

Then you would have to read a rack of entries to figure out what you want. Instead of saying ok this is what i can spend here is what falls into the price range and look at the equipment you picked out. Unless there was some kind of database that broke it up into categories i don't think that would work very well. Not that it's a bad idea, just time consuming for a new user.

You're absolutely correct. If you were looking for a motherboard known to work it would suck. If you picked out a motherboard first and wanted to know if it was likely to work it wouldn't be too bad. If it were in a searchable database it might not be too bad. In fact, if it were a database it could include the MB itself, along with all the chipsets, how many audio ports, etc. Much more powerful search ability. The real problem with having the wiki at the motherboard level isn't that it's a good way, I think it's the best way to find a new MB known to work. The problem is motherboards change so often that any entries made are likely to be obsolete in the near future. It also doesn't work for people wanting to try new motherboards or ones not already on the wiki. Those people are forced to either just try and hope, or make an educated guess based on chipset support as reported in other MB entries.

I do think a guided method of entering hardware info on the wiki instead of just asking people to go to the wiki and create a new page would help a lot.

yeah your right about the boards being obsolete, that is exactly what happened to me and was forced to try a couple boards. Luckily for me the second time was a charm. The other thing is that the people that do know how to get things working have already done that and are not likely to try new things just for fun and giggles. I know im not going to be trying any new boards anytime soon, i got my setup going finally and would like to learn the more advanced parts of LMCE before diving into install problems again. Really the only smart thing to do here is just keep it the way it is and hope that people update the wiki and if that doesn't happen then the regulars are going to have read the forums and do it for everyone else. Which i don't mind doing, i just don't trust what other people say about things unless i know who they are and have helped me out before. Eroneous info in the wiki has gotten me a couple times when i first started, and found myself and and my boss updating the wiki alot before getting things working. We could also start a code of ethics here on the board and the people that don't follow these ethics on a regular get ignored until they do what they are supposed to.

I tend more to Skeptic's point on this discussion. I think it would be a good way of combatting the ageing of mobos. The way it is currently you have to rely on extrapolating chipset info from existing entries or (researching them where not given) to new mobo chipsets. This would cut out one link in the research chain.

What would be good, would be a script you could trigger by pressing a button on the wiki that would audit the client so users could just browse to the wiki from their core/MDs and hit the button to upoad the critical data and then fill in some simple questions on the functionality.

No idea how to do this in Linux (have done something similar in M$ with WMI and VB Script tho)

I tend more to Skeptic's point on this discussion. I think it would be a good way of combatting the ageing of mobos. The way it is currently you have to rely on extrapolating chipset info from existing entries or (researching them where not given) to new mobo chipsets. This would cut out one link in the research chain.

What would be good, would be a script you could trigger by pressing a button on the wiki that would audit the client so users could just browse to the wiki from their core/MDs and hit the button to upoad the critical data and then fill in some simple questions on the functionality.

No idea how to do this in Linux (have done something similar in M$ with WMI and VB Script tho)

seems pointless to me. Because hardware does change so often and you aren't able to get things after a certain period of time. Me personally i have always tried motherboards that aren't in the wiki because lots of the things found don't fit my needs. I've started adding the motherboards I've used and feel like if someone doesn't care for the information I put out there then they can do the research before they spend their money. Thats smart buying.

I think more the problem is the daunting task of actually creating that page and gathering that information. I've just added my main board to the hardware and here are some of the things that went through my mind:

1)Many other have included a full set of specs for their MB. That's great, but we can look that up elsewhere. What's really valuable here are the personal experiences. Perhaps those should be moved to the top. And if you don't have the time/inclination, drop the tech specs

2) Not all of us can debug what's going wrong with our MB. We just know it doesn't work, and we don't want to damn a board that might not be a problem. In my case, I had a USB and Hard drive issue. I didn't realize that it was a MB problem until about a year later.

3) The things that I could identify physically about the board were not really the boards fault so much as a combination of the Board, power supply and case that I chose. Therefore the MB page gets a bit mixed up in it's purpose.

What these 3 observations tell me is that hardware really has a lot more difficulty on the wiki, and a lot more ease on the message boards, where the strengths of personal stories, combined setup issues and problem questions play well. The one thing it lacks is an enumerated list of all the hardware we could possibly use. Most of us like to have a list of products we can compare head to head where we can prepare a feature matrix that will guide us down a path to 2 or 3 choices.